


The Vow

by FallingFaintly



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29885865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FallingFaintly/pseuds/FallingFaintly
Summary: There are consequences to losing control.
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 18
Kudos: 68





	The Vow

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Fused](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29868924) by [DenmarkStreetGutterClub](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DenmarkStreetGutterClub/pseuds/DenmarkStreetGutterClub). 



> This is a continuation of a very intense story I posted to a group account. I don't normally do very dark and painful stuff, as you'll know if you've read the other stories on here, but I basically did it to see if I could, and it was rather unsettling. I didn't want to leave it in quite such a painful place, and it led on to this. I want to underline, this continuation is certainly not what I want for canon, but the challenge was 'If that happened, what would these particular characters think and do?' You can judge for yourself how successful it is. 
> 
> You don't need to read the first one to get what's going on here.

In the two months since Barclay had died, the partners had kept a watchful, painful distance from each other. The bubble of safety they had created that awful night had popped the following day, and Robin didn’t know how to find a way back to it. When he had told her he loved her, she’d felt an instant of pure bliss, and then, the next morning, doubt had swept everything away.

As she had travelled home to get herself cleaned up and prepared for the hard but necessary practicalities that would have to follow Barclay’s murder, she convinced herself that Strike had uttered those three words from a rush of the same emotional devastation that had led them to fall into each other with such abandon.

On her return, she registered that he was having trouble looking at her, and she had felt this confirmed her worst suspicions, holding back from him, and this distance had been maintained each day since. Every time she saw him, she had to stamp on an unbidden memory of their night together. Sometimes it was an almost tangible recollection of his hands or mouth on her, but mostly it was the tenderness with which he had held her as they fell into a fitful sleep.

She wondered if he regretted his rash declaration. Was it something he had said to other women he bedded? He would have said it to Charlotte for sure. Elin, Lorelei, too, no doubt. What about other one night stands? Robin winced each time she had this thought about what they had shared. _One night stand_ . It was so meaningless, so empty. _So_ not right for what she had felt as they had clung to each other, trying to forget their pain by giving vent to other feelings.

But it was only one night, and if one night of passion is never repeated, what else could be called?

The stress of these weeks had taken their toll on both of them, and Robin found herself alternating between eating rubbish, and craving something, anything, which would put something in her body that gave her some energy. She was exhausted. She developed a habit of steaming broccoli when she got in of an evening. Max made a few comments about the smell and the amount of it she was eating. She didn’t mind the smell at all, and found the taste and texture bizarrely comforting. _Iron rich, too_ , she thought, her eye on trying to beat the fatigue.

It was towards the end of that second month that she realized what was going on. She had been putting it down to stress and bad self care habits, but one morning in the bathroom, registering the end of the toothpaste tube, she opened the cabinet to see if there was a new tube there and the untouched tampon box seemed to come into sharp focus. Her heart swooped sickenly as the obvious conclusion bubbled up.

_No. Oh, god, no._

Strike checked his watch. Robin was late. He walked over to the window and looked into Denmark Street through the slats of the blind, as though it was likely he could conjure her up by looking for her. He wished he could. He missed her dreadfully, even though they still saw each other almost every day. 

When she had left that morning a couple of months back, he had watched her go through these same slats and had been absurdly happy, even after the devastating events of the night before. He had kept his vow, he thought. This was absolutely the woman he wanted to build his life with. He’d already done so in many ways. He didn’t know what would happen next, or what step seemed right, and he felt vulnerable and scared, but so sure.

When she had returned, there had been an almost imperceptible shift in her manner, a chill descending on the way she was with him, and he hadn’t known what to do. He had been certain, but she had pulled away, he could feel it. If she wanted to end the partnership entirely, she gave no sign, and Strike comforted himself that their professionalism and commitment seemed unscathed by their night together. It was cold comfort when he knew he wanted so much more, and had exposed the heart of himself only to have it fall heavily into empty space. He turned back into the room and walked to the kitchenette to make himself a coffee. 

As the kettle boiled, he heard the tread on the stairs outside and Robin entered, throwing him a cool smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and then looking over at Pat’s desk.

“Where’s Pat?” She asked, pulling her coat off and hanging it up.

“She’s not well, tummy bug. Are you ok? You’re late,” he said.

Robin blinked at him.

“How did you…” she began and then stopped, shaking her head slightly and smiling. “oh, yes.”

Strike had made her a coffee and handed it to her.

“Thanks,” she said, taking a sip and grimacing. “Well, it’s good that she’s not here. I need to talk to you.”

Robin’s tone was friendly, professional and detached. Strike felt his stomach drop like he’d just begun the downward slope of a rollercoaster. _She was going to say she was leaving, wasn’t she?_ He swallowed, and nodded to their inner office.

Once in there, she leaned against her own desk. _She’s not sitting. She’s not staying. Fuck_. He walked in and stood in front of her, his arms folded in front of him.

“What’s going on?” He managed.

She took a steadying breath.

“I just think we should...” she began, and then paused and tried again. “I think we need to talk about what happened.”

Strike nodded, shifting his legs, his arms still crossed, almost bracing himself for the killer blow he was sure was coming.

“Because we haven’t. We didn’t. There was so much to do afterwards, and I… we just let everything slide,” she said.

“We did,” he agreed. 

“And I guess you said things you didn’t mean and maybe you didn’t know how to take them back and then…”

Robin stopped. Strike was shaking his head vigorously and had unfolded his arms, his expression intense.

“Woah, woah,” he insisted, bringing his hand up to pause her. “I never said anything I didn’t mean, and I have nothing to take back.”

Robin’s brow creased.

“But you… the morning, when I came back…”

“Yeah, the morning when you came back and acted like it hadn’t happened. I thought you made your regret pretty clear, so I just...” he responded hotly.

“ _My_ regret?” She flashed back. “I didn’t say anything I regret!”

“Neither did I!” He said, stepping towards her.

His vehemence reverberated around the office and they were silent for a moment. Robin was scrambling to make sense of the conversation. It hadn’t gone the way she expected, and she still had important things to say and no idea how to get to them now.

“You said you..” she began, and trailed off.

“Yes,” he said. “I did. _I do_.”

Her mouth fell open slightly.

“But if you regret that night, I’m not going to try and change your mind, Robin,” he continued, a note of unhappy defeat in his voice.

“I don’t,” she whispered. “I don’t”

He looked at her, trying to see what could possibly be holding them back from falling into each’s arms.

She brought her hands up and rubbed her face, her shoulders slumped.

“Oh god,” she said.

“Robin,” he said, shaking his head and closing the distance between them, putting his hands on her shoulders. She dropped her hands away from her face and looked at him. “Robin, I’ve never said it and not meant it. Not to anyone, and I didn’t start that night.”

She smiled sadly, and wished this could be the end point, the happily ever after, fade out to credits. But she knew there was more, and that however sure he was right now, that _more_ may well knock out whatever wobbly scaffolding held up this tentative, new found candour between them.

“Why does this not feel like it’s what you wanted to hear?” He asked, his left hand falling away.

“It is, it’s just I don’t know what it means,” she replied.

“It means I love you?” He said, sounding surer of himself, connecting his hand to her shoulder again.

“I didn’t mean… Oh, bloody hell. Cormoran, I need to tell you something. I thought I knew how to say it because I thought there was nothing here, not like that, but you’ve completely messed that up. And now I don’t know how to say it without messing up what is actually here again, but you’ve still got to know,” she said, bravely.

Strike listened to the note of worry in her statement, and took a small step back, just to allow her the space to speak without feeling like he was bearing down on her.

“Go on,” he said.

“I… I’m pregnant,” she told him.

He felt his mouth go slack in shock, and he forgot to breathe. Her expression was fearful as he gasped in air a few seconds later, and swallowed, his mind going from blank, to alarmed, before landing on protective.

“Shit. Wow,” he said.

She dropped her head down at the inelegant response.

“I know it’s not what either of us want, and I honestly don’t know what to do,” she said, staring at her feet.

Strike felt the hit of a million thoughts all at once. He thought of Charlotte, fucking Charlotte, with an inevitability that made him angry, but not with Robin. He was angry that a revelation like this would have always dragged him to Charlotte first because of what she did. He thought of his mother, and the father who couldn’t be bothered with him and left him to a shiftless childhood with a woman who loved him well enough but didn’t know how to do more, and again, he knew that wasn’t Robin. He knew he wasn’t Rokeby either. What had created this wasn’t an empty lustful fuck in a nightclub, it was the most intensely loving need he had ever felt in his life. And he thought of Barclay, his kids now without a dad because of a job Strike gave him, and again, that wasn’t Robin’s issue either. 

“How long have you known?” He asked, suddenly wondering if she had kept this from him for fear of his response, and the thought actually hurt him more than anything.

“Since this morning. I bought a test from Boots and did it in the Starbucks loo before I got here,” she told him, looking up and briskly wiping away a tear that had escaped and run down her cheek.

She’d kept nothing from him, she’d come to him almost as soon as she possibly could, and if ever life had presented him with an opportunity to make good on a vow, this was it.

“It’s not what either of us wanted,” she repeated, and he knew that was true enough, but that was absolutely immaterial now. Life didn’t happen the way anyone wanted or expected, the past two months had underscored that with painful brutality. Strike knew it every day he walked with one good leg.

“Robin, I want you. And everything and everyone that comes with you. The business I made with you and the person I made with you,” he said, his voice steady, reaching for her hand. He looked down at it and ran his thumb over her knuckles. “I can’t promise to be a perfect dad, fuck knows I’m not a perfect partner, but I promise I will do my level best to give you and whoever this is the best of me.”

He looked back up, and she was crying and spluttering out surprised laugh.

“I thought we’d be done,” she said, gabbling out her pent up insecurities. “I thought this had to be it. I thought you’d be so angry. I don’t know how we can do what we do if…”

“Fucksake, Ellacott, stop,” he said, pulling her into him, and she yielded gratefully into his arms, and they both laughed gently into each other with the sheer relief of finally embracing again after two months of torturing themselves.

“Do you think we could do _something_ the easy way?” She said into his shoulder.

“Not worth it unless you earn it,” he chuckled into hers.

She pulled her head up to look at him, her eyes soft. 

“Let’s make it worth it, then,” she said, and he pressed a kiss against her mouth with the full force of a new vow he was never going to break either.


End file.
